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Pay Raises Are Shrinking in 2025, CFOs Say (axios.com) 72

Companies are planning smaller raises this year, according to a new survey of chief financial officers from Gartner. From a report: It's become harder to find a job, particularly in the white-collar world. So employers are far less worried about people quitting and don't need to do as much to get workers to stick around. "Nobody is talking about the Great Resignation anymore," says Randeep Rathindran, a vice president in the finance practice at Gartner. The vast majority of employers, 94%, are still planning raises this year, per Gartner, which surveyed 300 CFOs and finance executives. The amounts are just smaller now. The share of CFOs planning to raise average employee compensation by 4% or more in 2025 fell to 61% from 86% in 2023.

Pay Raises Are Shrinking in 2025, CFOs Say

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  • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @03:28PM (#65125885)

    If it's less than inflation, it's not a raise. I guarantee you the owners/shareholders/board are beating inflation unless the company is in the process of going under.

    • Agreed, and by that definition I would say few people have gotten a raise since the 70's. Matching inflation is just keeping a person's salary the same.
      • I wouldn't go that far - at the individual level, people have had raises as gained experience. Or because they had leverage, were really charming, or slept with the boss.

        What has happened is an average loss for most professions relative to inflation while the top execs keep on grabbing more and more and more.

    • Then no one working really got a raise, but everyone including retirees just got smacked with more price inflation to pay for everyone getting a raise.
    • If it's less than inflation, it's not a raise.

      Except that wages have been exceeding inflation since at least mid-2023: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]

      • But the most serious inflation was 2021 and 2022. So that's kind of like a store raising prices 20% for a week and then having a 10% of sale. Companies have already made 6% gains on employees so who cares if they gave up 1% in 2023 and 2024, especially if it is ending in 2025.
        • CFOs know they made 6+% gains on employees during the pandemic, just ask them. I mean maybe don't ask the one who cuts your paycheck, but ask a CFO.
          They like it when we ask about keeping pace with inflation because:
          Inflation is a measure of the prices of a few things included in the consumer price index "market basket" - White bread, tea, electric tea kettles, beer, gasoline, microwaves, refrigerators.
          Inflation as the World Bank calculates it doesn't necessarily reflect the massive house price bubble(s), in

          • Well I work with a lot of "workers from India" and I know I can't be replaced by them or I would have already. There are probably some that can do what I do, but those ones are working on European accounts making almost what I make.

            But by all means, you keep believing your employer's stories about why they need to pay you less year over year.
        • But the most serious inflation was 2021 and 2022. So that's kind of like a store raising prices 20% for a week and then having a 10% of sale.

          Is that true though? I genuinely don't know and haven't done the math. But looking at a pure "area under the curve" on the statista chart, the area above the line in the 2021-2022 period and the period below the line following look roughly equivalent. If I might give a counter example to your raising prices 20% for a week/10% sale, what if a company raised prices 15

  • by hwstar ( 35834 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @03:38PM (#65125925)

    On one hand, the president wants to bring back domestic manufacturing.

    On the other hand, this will take some time. You can't build manufacturing plants, and find the right talent for them overnight.

    If he follows through with his Tariff plan, there will be some serious inflation which the people have to suffer through during the transition time.

    You can bet that a significant fraction of this inflation will not be accounted for in adjusting income tax rates, or social security benefits (at least over a couple of year's time).

    This means prices will go up, people will not be able to afford what they did in the past, economic demand will drop, and people will lose their jobs due to the drop in demand across the economy.

    Times will get tough for a while during the transition.

    This is why I think companies will not be giving out significant raises. They see this coming.

    • This incorrectly assumes he has a plan other than to save his own skin, even if it means destroying America.
    • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @03:49PM (#65125959)

      He's following Project 2025 to the letter even though he claims to have never heard of it. https://static.project2025.org... [project2025.org]

      • He's following Project 2025 [project2025.org] to the letter even though he claims to have never heard of it.

        The people around him, many of whom helped write that, are following the plan, Trump probably doesn't actually know that much (as usual) or even care as long as people shower him with adoration -- and money ... /cynical

        People like Stephen Miller are the truly evil ones with agendas. Trump's evil stems from him only caring about himself and going with whatever flow gives him what he wants/needs regardless of the consequences to others. He easily changes his positions on things; for example, he used to b

        • At the end of the day the voters put him there. The identity of those whispering in his ears, his propensity for blatant serial dishonesty is so well known it's a truism of the same kind as "water is wet", these were well known long before November 5.

          So if there's anyone to blame, it isn't the lunatics and grifters writing Donald Trump's policies, it's the voters who put him there. This is apparently want Americans want because they have effectively become nihilists.

          No, not effectively. American has become

          • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @05:53PM (#65126361)

            At the end of the day the voters put him there. ...

            I don't disagree, but I'll go a bit further and offer that the non-voters helped a lot. Trump won by just less than 50% of the popular vote (about 49.8%) and only about 1.5% more than Harris -- so *not* a "landslide", nor really even a "mandate". There were about 90 million eligible voters who did *not* vote, so I put more of the responsibility on them for not showing up. There's no reliable way to guess who they would have voted for, but it's a good bet that most of Trump's voters showed up, so perhaps more of those no-shows may have gone for Harris than Trump -- even a little would have changed the outcome. Granted the popular vote doesn't equate to the Electoral vote, but it contributes heavily to that. Also, Democrats could have helped themselves more by Biden keeping his initial promise to not run again and letting Harris go through the normal nominating process ...

            In any case, my feeling is that people who don't vote, don't get to complain about the results.

            • Conspiracy theory time. Those 90 million voters died or were permanently disabled during COVID. It's the same reason that so many companies can't find workers, and you can't find 24/7 stores anymore. I figure it was either COVID or legalizing Marijuana. They happened around the same time.
            • Blame me. I literally wrote in "Mickey Mouse" for my vote.

              Vote for Kamala? As in support the Democratic party that has been sitting there absorbing wealth from their positions of power and unable to follow their own rules for nominations in pursuit of more power? LOL.

              Vote for Trump? ROFLMAO. Not a single chance on this planet.

              However, I did vote. Blame me. It will not change a fucking thing. The votes are suppressed and the election process is fully rigged. But yeah, blame me for the terrible situation this

          • At the end of the day the voters put him there.

            As long as voter disenfranchisement (voter purges, gerrymandering, using McCarthyism as a justification to prevent any moderate or left of center parties gaining ballot access) and the electoral college are things, this is absolutely not true. That's just politicians picking their own voters.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      On one hand, the president wants to bring back domestic manufacturing.

      That ship sailed, It's not coming back. You may see a small uptick on things like microwaves, washing machines, TVs (expensive durable goods) being assembled here, but the economics just don't work to go from raw materials to finished product in America. And the economics REALLY don't work for commodity goods.

    • by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @04:04PM (#65126011)

      That word "transition" is carrying a *LOT* of water in your post. I'm not sure that manufacturing can even be brought back to the states in a way that will have a meaningful impact on employment. I think all that's really happening with the tariffs is that the US is setting itself up to no longer be a player on the world stage economically. This isn't going to be a painful transition. It's going to be a devastating sweep of the vast majority of us so that those at the top of the economic heap can get an ever larger slice of the economic pie. What they haven't been smart enough to understand is that taking an ever larger percentage of a pie that's shrinking will still end up with them having less overall. Let's see if they figure it out before it impacts them in a meaningful way, or if they end up flushing the economic toilet so hard it sucks them ass first into the sewer with the rest of us.

      • by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @05:29PM (#65126299) Journal

        There are people up here in Canada seriously beginning to look at transforming CETA into some sort of closer trade bond with the EU, because the choices right now are between the growing capriciousness and unpredictably of the United States and cozying up to the tyrants in Beijing, or trying somehow to make a hodgepodge of multilateral agreements with a dozen or more states (look how well that plan has worked for post-Brexit Britain). One thing is sure, between the threats to our economy and even the threats to our sovereignty and outright existence as a nation, the US is no longer a reliable neighbor and partner, and even after Trump has long gone, his reinvigoration of Manifest Destiny and the casual disregard with one of the United States' longest and most reliable allies means we need to look to the last democratic bloc of nations left on the planet.

        • There are people up here in Canada seriously beginning to look at transforming CETA into some sort of closer trade bond with the EU, because the choices right now are between the growing capriciousness and unpredictably of the United States and cozying up to the tyrants in Beijing, or trying somehow to make a hodgepodge of multilateral agreements with a dozen or more states (look how well that plan has worked for post-Brexit Britain). One thing is sure, between the threats to our economy and even the threats to our sovereignty and outright existence as a nation, the US is no longer a reliable neighbor and partner, and even after Trump has long gone, his reinvigoration of Manifest Destiny and the casual disregard with one of the United States' longest and most reliable allies means we need to look to the last democratic bloc of nations left on the planet.

          As an American, I can't blame any traditionally allied nation of the Unite States for attempting to do anything they can to create separation between them and us. Electing Trump to office, and him immediately talking about trying to subsume Canada, retake the Panama Canal and "buy" Greenland leaves a foul stench in the air that every other country should be wary of. I feel horrible that we're, once again, proclaiming ourselves untrustworthy on the world stage, but apparently there weren't enough of us oppos

          • I would expand your statement beyond just traditional allies of the United States. The basic tenet of post-WWII diplomacy has been the Pax Americana. The US would have outside influence and control but, in exchange, would produce and pay for a period of peace. This was supposed to accompanied by nuclear non-proliferation and an honest attempt to disarm all nuclear states.

            The Pax Americana lasted for quite a while. Nuclear non-proliferation completely failed. Unfortunately, none of the former "super p

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        If the goal is to produce stuff entirely domestically, then it's not just setting up some factories, it's setting up whole supply chains. From gathering the raw materials to assembling the final product. It's a decades long process.

        • If the goal is to produce stuff entirely domestically, then it's not just setting up some factories, it's setting up whole supply chains. From gathering the raw materials to assembling the final product. It's a decades long process.

          It's not just decades long, it's also that some of those raw materials simply aren't available within our country. Which may play a part in why Trump wants to buy Greenland. Or he's just an imperialist. I wouldn't rule out either.

      • What they haven't been smart enough to understand is that taking an ever larger percentage of a pie that's shrinking will still end up with them having less overall.

        No amount is enough. They need everything, even if everything is almost infinitely less than a mere 10% of the largest economy ever built.

        (yeah, I don't think anyone will understand what I just wrote)

        • What they haven't been smart enough to understand is that taking an ever larger percentage of a pie that's shrinking will still end up with them having less overall.

          No amount is enough. They need everything, even if everything is almost infinitely less than a mere 10% of the largest economy ever built.

          (yeah, I don't think anyone will understand what I just wrote)

          I understand ya. They're pissed the middle class are still getting a cookie. They don't care if their share drops to one cookie from the current eleven, so long as the middle class loses their cookie in the process.

          • I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you mostly understood what I said. I was being overly pessimistic because responses usually (intentionally?) miss what I was saying.

            I am not entirely certain that they are pissed off that someone else might get a cookie; however, they definitely do not want anyone else to have a cookie. The focus is more on having EVERYTHING. Absolute power and control.

    • "Times will get tough for a while during the transition."

      What you seem to be assuming is that it's a "transition" to some sort of better future. But the plan only goes as far as tearing everything down. The part after that is basically a shrug of the shoulders, and an assumption that the gaps will get filled.

      Near as I can tell there is no plan for corresponding growth in affluence to offset the misery that's in the process of being generated. Except for the very rich, of course.

    • On one hand, the president wants to bring back domestic manufacturing.

      He says a lot of shit he has no intention of fulfilling; usually because he thinks people want to hear it. But you don't know that he really wants to bring back manufacturing. As mentioned, here https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org], that ship is gone. Does Trump even know this? Uncertain. A good rule of thumb for things Trump - an inveterate liar - says is believe none of it until you see it with your own eyes.

      • I'm not as convinced as you are that the ship has sailed. It's expensive to manufacture in the US due to (a) higher wages and (b) a strong dollar.

        Inflation is wiping out our higher wages. It's funny that the same people who complain about inflation tend to complain about minimum wage being too high. Increasing inflation and decreasing minimum wage are essentially two sides to the same coin. So those who oppose minimum wages should be glad to see some inflation.

        Trump has gone back and forth on the s

    • by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @04:11PM (#65126047)

      On the other hand, this will take some time. You can't build manufacturing plants, and find the right talent for them overnight.

      Why would a company invest in building a whole manufacturing plant when the current president's term of office will expire in four years, and someone sane will be elected and cancel the dumb tarrif program before you could even finish the new plant?

      If he follows through with his Tariff plan

      Hopefully Congress will never approve it after considering the ramifications. The president does not have the power to create tarrifs.

      This means prices will go up, people will not be able to afford what they did in the past

      Perhaps Trump's game plan was to Deliberately incite people towards violent protest all along?

      Try and get targeted tarrifs in place designed to create a temporarily dire situation. Once there is sufficient civil unrest caused by your policies, then you have a legal excuse to invoke additional presidential powers; declare a national emergency. Issue an executive order that puts martial law in effect nationwide, and finally send in military soldiers and attack drones to rectify the situation through targeted elimination of all opponents

      • Perhaps Trump's game plan was to Deliberately incite people towards violent protest all along?

        Careful, I said this just a few stories ago (Doomsday clock) and I immediately got downvoted by MAGA. I truly believe that Trump is such an unhappy person that he wants to know that all of America feels worse than him and it's that simple. My brain still clings to finding logical answers, and that's the only thing logical.

      • Personally I think tariffs would be great. People are buying too much stuff anyway. "Consumer goods" costing more wouldn't bother me.

        Of course tariffs would need to couple that with a reduction in the cost of necessities - housing, healthcare, food. Which is not something the Republicans can ever do.

        • by mysidia ( 191772 )

          "Consumer goods" costing more wouldn't bother me.
          Of course tariffs would need to couple that with a reduction in the cost of necessities - housing, healthcare, food.

          "Necessities" ARE consumer goods. They are inherently linked and there is no way to decouple them. If the price of goods goes up, then the price of food and healthcare will go up twice as much or more. It's goods whose demand might go down, but the demand for necessities is inflexible and always increase much more.

          Producing a unit of foo

        • America doesn't produce crude that can easily be refined into gasoline. That's why 60% of all the goods that Canada sells to America is crude, because Canadian crude is cheaper and easier to refine. So how do you feel about a very sharp increase in gas prices as well as diesel and jet fuel, which will increase the price of everything that needs to be shipped from a warehouse to a retail store as well as your daily commute? Even if your refineries that are currently producing fuel from Canadian crude are
      • The power to set tariffs was given to the executive decades ago. Congress has no say in the matter, and even if it did, the GOP is just going to roll over and play dead for Trump on every topic.
        • by mysidia ( 191772 )

          No; the power is Congress' alone. US Constitution Article I, Section 8, Clause 1.

          The president can no more create a tariff than they can declare war or set a new income tax rate. The right to set tariffs is among the powers reserved by the constitution exclusively to the congress, and the congress cannot reassign an exclusive power to the executive branch without a constitutional amendment.

          • Don't bother. The constitution means fuck all to these people, except for their deliberate misreading of the an apparent right to OWN ALL THE GUNZ!!

    • If he follows through with his Tariff plan, there will be some serious inflation which the people have to suffer through during the transition time.

      In which case he only has two years, after which the Dems will retake both houses of Congress.

      Presidents always like to believe their election means they have a broad mandate in support of all the various things they want to do... but, typically, it comes down to people's pocketbooks more than any other factor. That's even what a lot of 2024 Trump voters explicitly stated when asked - they didn't like a lot of what he said, but prices went up under Biden and they were not happy about it.

      And, for what it's w

    • If he follows through with his Tariff plan, there will be some serious inflation which the people have to suffer through during the transition time.

      I had someone argue with me that tariffs are good because that extra money stays in the U.S. and goes toward waiters and such. No really, that was their logic. They even spelled it out showing how that extra $10 from the importer would go toward working people or companies. Even telling them a tariff is a tax on people and all that happens is the importe
  • by Rujiel ( 1632063 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @04:01PM (#65125999)
    ...so that they can replace their workers, rather than commit to giving them raises. Late stage capitalism
  • C suite (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LazarusQLong ( 5486838 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @04:06PM (#65126033)
    I am betting that the vast majority of C suite types get a pretty damn good raise/bonus.
  • Who every single policy he promised is guaranteed to cause inflation. That inflation is going to trigger high interest rates making it difficult for companies to borrow when they need to. That in turn is going to lead to layoffs and a recession. By design I might add.

    So yeah no shit we're not going to get pay raises. Elections have consequences. We were on track for more interest rate cuts in a strong economy and we just pissed it all away for God only knows what reasons...

    Did you see Trump though s
  • Ya, but ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @04:31PM (#65126115)

    Pay Raises Are Shrinking in 2025, CFOs Say

    ... just for the people doing the actual work, not for the CFOs and other C-Suite members -- I'm guessing.

    • People are looking for other opportunities and not finding them. Hence why satisfaction is so low. If there were a plethora of jobs and you were unhappy with yours, you wouldn't be looking, you'd be starting a new job. Satisfaction is low because people aren't able to switch from jobs they don't like to ones that they do. Employees don't have strong negotiating power. And even a raise isn't going to make somebody suddenly like a job.
  • We're in for a bad time in the coming 2 years. Capital understands this and is circling their wagons hoping they're not going to get pulled in by the undertow of the waves that they themselves created through irresponsible economic decisions. The same folks that run the world banks sit on the boards of these companies. If not the exact same people it's their relatives.
  • You are already effectively making less money due to inflation, wouldn't surprise me if companies start trying to reduce salary each year
  • I mean, when ROI demands that they don't.

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